Disabled Parent Kept Finding School Parking Spaces Taken By Families Who Didn’t Belong There, So They Finally Decided To Confront Them
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Accessible parking only works when drivers understand that convenience and necessity are not interchangeable.
At one crowded school pickup, a mother with a valid permit found another driver occupying two spaces, including an accessible one.
Rather than apologize, the woman explained that her children should not have to walk farther.
The response only made things worse.
AITA for being mad about misuse of disabled parking spaces?
I (38F) am I mother of one (M9). He and I and his other mother (42F) all have invisible physical disabilities.
The disabled parking permit in my car is registered to me – the only one who can drive – but either of the others is eligible for one and could get it if there was a need to.
It is a constant ongoing source of annoyance and anger to me that other parents park in the disabled parking spaces outside the school when they do not have a valid permit.
Aside from the obvious moral issues, this is also illegal. You can be fined a significant amount if caught doing this.
The school isn’t much help.
I have complained often and at length to teachers, and the school’s administration (I think they fear me approaching at this point) but they say (correctly) that all they can do is educate.
They put out notices, they put up signs.
I understand where they are coming from when they tell me they aren’t in a position to enforce the law – they’re not cops.
She decided to say something.
It’s very often the same few people who do it, and I’ve often thought about saying something myself, but never have, until today.
My partner happened to be with me (which is not usual) when I picked up my son today, and there was no disabled space available, because a woman was parked diagonally across TWO spaces – one of them disabled only.
She was not one of the usual suspects, and she was still sitting in her car, so once I had my son, I told him to go to the car and wait with mummy. Then I approached this woman and had the following verbatim conversation.
Here’s how the conversation started.
“Excuse me, ma’am. Do you have a disabled permit?”
“Do you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well. No I don’t, but I have 3 children, and I don’t want them to walk too far along the road.”
She then rolled the window back up.
This woman wasn’t the only person illegally parked.
I was at this point absolutely furious.
I went to my car, and grabbed my phone, went back and took a photo of this lady’s numberplate.
Not necessarily with the actual intent to report her. Just so I can if I want to, or maybe the realisation that it’s a thing I CAN do would remind her it’s against the law.
In the other disabled space, also parked illegally, was a woman who does it all the time.
She called out for me to “Back off, witch!” and “stop harassing her”.
She’s second guessing what she did.
I didn’t feel I was “harassing” her. I spoke to her one time, and then took one photo of her numberplate, which took like ninety seconds all up.
My partner says I didn’t do anything wrong.
But I am second guessing myself, because there were stacks of parents there and no one weighed in on my side, but someone did on the side of the woman blatantly breaking the law?
It’s not one of the big ticket laws or anything – she’s hardly a murderer, but it’s a law that’s got an obvious reason. I thought surely most people can agree you don’t park in spaces meant only for disabled people.
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AITA? For the conversation? The photo?
She didn’t do anything wrong. One person who is breaking the law defending another person who is breaking the law does not make them right.
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.
This person reassures her that she didn’t do anything wrong.
I doubt that the other moms had disabilities.
This is a good suggestion!
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a neighbor who documented times of noise spikes and turned their neighbor into a model tenant.
This person would’ve played it differently.
This disabled mother calmly questioned a driver blocking two spaces, only to hear that convenience for three children supposedly justified parking illegally.
Photographing the license plate after one brief exchange was reasonable documentation, not harassment, regardless of the bystanders’ silence.
She had no permit, but her entitlement somehow covered two spaces.
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